12 Angry People
The look on my face must have been priceless.
I was at a conference in Scottsdale. Mingling and chatting with a respected business professor about one of my favorite topics: organizational resilience over the long term.
My words, in essence: “Surely the Board of Directors would be interested and accountable for the long-term success of their organizations, right?”
The professor had zero respect for Boards of Directors. His response, in essence:
“Boards of Directors are lazy and paid to provide the appearance of shareholder accountability.”
I had just read about a recent NY jury mistrial, where 12 men and women were unable to come to consensus, or even continue deliberating. Stuck. Playground behavior.
Here are three case studies in the news about the challenges of deliberating among humans: two in real-time, the other a historic tale.
Variety article about the ongoing challenges at Warner Brothers Discovery, questioning whether the CEO bonus aligns with organizational performance:
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/david-zaslav-2024-compensation-warner-bros-discovery-exceed-bonus-targets-1236418153/
HP ex-CTO, Phil McKinney posted on LinkedIn regarding CEO transition and BoD challenges. He uses the words “adult supervision” which is painful:
From BBC, NY judge declares a mistrial for Harvey Weinstein based on conflict among the 7 female and 5 male jurors.